Beer Athletics

Hello everyone. I hope you are all enjoying this hot Independence Day weekend. I am nourishing at home with my hubbus and checking what my online friends are up to. I bumped into this new beer commercial on YouTube. It's quite funny as is, but it's even more funny because I know the main beer athlete -- it's my friend Martin Melo. Martin is rocking a turquoise bathing suit and doing an impressive balancing act. I love that last jump once he gets his hands on some beer. The commercial depicts Martin very accurately. He really is that guy who would do anything to get a beer.

California Luau

This was not your typical Luau. It was in the middle of a work day, it was huge, and it was in California. The pit for roasting pigs and salmon was dug out few days earlier. I was on the verge of emotional breakdown when I saw a dozen or so of banana leaf wrapped pigs waiting to be put into the pit. These creatures spent two nights in the blazing hot "grave" before they were devoured by hundreds of Googlers and their guests at the Luau today.

A pretty decent Elvis impersonator and Hula dancers entertained the crowds as they were waiting in the long lines to get their hands on the pulled pork. Definitely the most unorthodox Luau I ever attented.

For those considering to attend a great Luau in Hawaii, the best Luau I've ever been to was A Feast at Lele in Lahaina, Maui. Six courses of delicious food were served right to your table, the Sun was setting right behind the stage, and the atmosphere was intimate. Not to mention, the male servers were topless. :)

Hawaii offers Luau on every corner, but it is worth doing some research in order to avoid ending up at one of the mass Luaus with crappy buffet style food.

This is the most decent photo of the hula dancers I was able to take today. They were dancing inside of a cafeteria before they moved outside, where the shadows were way too sharp to even consider taking any photos.

As a photographer, my favorite part of the Luau entertainment are the fire dancers. I guess it has something to do with my obsession with capturing movement and with long exposure photography. I took the below photo at a Feast at Lele in Maui last year.

Have you been to Luau before? What was your experience?

Honey Badger is Really Pretty Bad Ass

This made me laugh so hard. And it still does. Hope it puts a smile on your face too.

In Pride We Trust

It's been fourty years since the first Pride was held in San Francisco. Every year, the organizers select a different theme for the event. This year's theme -- "In Pride We Trust". It was estimated that this year's parade would welcome 1.2 million visitors. By what I saw, I think the estimate was correct. The parade is very visually similar every year. Some floats are reused over and over, and many costumes have been used at the Burning Man, Love Parade, or at the Halloween in Castro in the past years. What I like to do at the various SF festivals is to pay attention to individual people, and appreciate their individual creativity. Here are my favorite costumes:

Count Dracula Welcomes You to His Home

When Orava Castle was built in 13th century, I bet that no-one had any idea that

• seven hundred years later, a German movie maker F. W. Murnau will film a vampire classic Nosferatu and use the castle as Dracula's home
• eight hundred years later people will watch Nosferatu streamed directly from the Internet, and Google Earth will offer an interactive 3D image of the castle
• Petra's dad will take his big ass BMW to Nosferatu's castle to marry his daughter to Brad

The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Nosferatu was ranked twenty-first in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.

Not that Long Ago

I knew that our wedding venue has been a movie set a while back, but it was not until today that I finally watched this silent movie. It gets interesting in minute 20:00 (watch it here), when a German real estate agent Knock enters count's castle.

Count Orlok (the Dracula) waits for him between the second gate and the tunnel, greets him, and then walks with him into the tunnel. I almost fell off the couch when I saw what the castle looked like only 89 years ago. It was in a state of disrepair, a grass was growing in the main plaza, and pathways had huge pot holes.

This is the main plaza at Orava Castle as seen from the tunnel. The alcove window is part of a Knight's Hall where Brad and I got married. On the right: groom and the wedding party are led from the tunnel through the plaza into the Knight's Hall.

Eighty-nine years after filming Nosferatu, our family and friends come to join us at this majestic castle. Count Orlok did not show up, but one could almost feel his creepy presence.

I wonder what will the next eight hundred winters and summers do to the castle. Will other great movies or "some not yet invented things" use this castle in the future? I sure hope they will. And I wish I could live to see it.

Photo: Jan Cechovsky, Brano Herchl